Missives

If the ‘white flight’ from Myspace to Facebook was like the post-war migration of white people from urban areas to tract houses in the suburbs, App.net could represent the digital equivalent of white people moving from suburban tract houses to gated communities or urban loft conversions. It contains elements of both white flight (affluent white people distancing themselves from the more diverse user bases of Facebook and Twitter) and gentrification (affluent white people creating a site that conforms to their tastes and has a higher cost of entry), and to me, these things make App.net seem a lot less appealing: I’m happy to escape “being the product,” but joining a digital country club holds little appeal.

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Whitney Erin Boesel, from her “Race, Class, App.net: The Beginning of ‘White Flight’ from Facebook & Twitter?”

h/t, and lots more from Anil Dash.

(via thesmithian)